The Prey Read Online Free PDF Page B

shredded wood chips from the deck. A large iron-cast grappling hook—black as night with four razor-sharp claws—is embedded halfway into the deck. The grappling hook is attached to a rope that extends all the way to the riverbank. And that’s where I see them. The hunters. They’re partially hidden behind a grassy knoll but the rope is like an arrow pointing right at them.
    I fasten my hands around the grappling hook. A slippery emission coats it—their saliva—and I jerk my arms back. “Don’t touch the hooks!” I yell at the top of my voice. “Their saliva is all over them!”
    “Now’s not the time to be delicate!” Sissy shouts back. “We have to pry them off!”
    I stare back at her, dumbfounded by her ignorance. It’s possible she simply doesn’t know: if the hunters’ saliva gets into an open cut or sore and into our bloodstream, it will all be over. The turning will begin. I rip off my shirt, wrap it around one of the claws. “Don’t let it touch your skin!” I yell. “Use your shirts!” But I can’t wrench the claw free—it’s too deeply embedded into the wood.
    Another grappling hook smashes into the deck on my right, narrowly missing David’s head.
    The hunters spill out of the shadows, pulling at the grappling-hook ropes, their strength churlish and brutal. The boat lists toward the riverbank with discomfiting speed.
    “Sissy! Cut the rope!” But she can’t hear me; she’s trying to pull the other grappling hook out. That one is embedded even more deeply—she’s not getting it out. I reach for her belt, grab a dagger, and then I’m reaching over into the water at the stern. But when I touch the harpoon rope that’s pressed against the boat, my heart sinks. It’s made of a hard synthetic material I instinctively know is resistant to cutting. It’ll take fifteen minutes to cut through with this knife. I try to shove the rope downward, hoping to dislodge the boat that way. But the rope is pressed too tightly into the wood.
    By now the boat’s been pulled halfway to the bank, close enough to see a hunter—hissing, ankle-deep in the river—making a throwing motion. A grappling hook soars into the night sky.
    “Watch out!” I shout.
    Ben is focused on dislodging the first grappling hook; he doesn’t see this one in the air arcing down toward his head. Epap, still cradling his ribs, leaps up and pulls Ben away just as the hook smashes into the very spot he was kneeling. They fall to the ground, in front of the cabin, Epap’s body flopping to the deck. He’s been knocked out; I see an ugly gash down the side of his face where a hook must have struck him. Blood gushes out.
    The hunters scream with ecstasy into the night.
    The rope line falls right on top of Epap, and now I’m diving at him, shoving him roughly aside before the line can pull taut and pin him painfully against the deck, or, worse yet, sever a limb. Three grappling-hook lines are hauling us in now. And with such force, the far length of the boat lifts a foot off the water. The boat, listing at an angle, ripples faster yet toward the bank as if powered by a sideways motor.
    Sissy is hacking away at one of the grappling-hook lines, but she gives up. They’re made of the same synthetic material as the harpoon rope. Her eyes focus with intensity, a hundred calculations made in seconds, a dozen options considered and discarded until there is only one remaining. She grabs David and Jacob roughly, pushes them into the cabin where Ben and I are still sprawled. Epap is still knocked out, his chest rising and falling with shallow rapidness.
    “Listen to me,” she says. Water drips off her face. “I’m swimming for the bank. I’ll dive off this side of the cabin and swim underwater so they don’t see me. In the meantime, you all distract them. Keep pulling on those hooks.”
    “Sissy, no!” Ben cries.
    “It’s the only play we have left.”
    “There’s got to be something else—”
    She grabs Ben’s arms, hard